Environmental policy of the first Donald Trump administration
[11][22] Within days after taking office, he invited American manufacturers to suggest which regulations should be eliminated; industry leaders submitted 168 comments, of which nearly half targeted Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules.
[72][73] In a 2018 analysis, David Cutler and Francesca Dominici of Harvard University stated that under the most conservative estimate, the Trump administration's rollbacks and proposed reversals of environmental rules would likely "cost the lives of over 80 000 US residents per decade and lead to respiratory problems for many more than 1 million people.
In March 2020, it was announced that the EPA would not expect routine monitoring and compliance or reporting of pollution emissions and would not pursue penalties for breaking those rules as long as it could be claimed that the violations were caused by the pandemic.
At the urging of The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, the pandemic was also used as a reason to increase the sale of public land to industry to open them to mining, drilling for gas and oil, and cutting timber.
"[91][92] The construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access had been placed on hold by then-president Barack Obama, who considered it a major contributor to climate change due to the greenhouse gas intensive extraction of oil from tar sands.
Joining California were Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia and the District of Columbia.
[116] In December 2020, following Joseph Biden's successful bid for the presidency General Motors CEO Mary Barra announced that GM would drop its participation in the Trump administration lawsuit seeking to block California's right to set its own clean air standards.
[126] The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration provides $250 million for programs which aid countries with high risk of impacts from rising and increasingly warm and acidic sea water levels.
Trump accused President Obama of "denying millions of Americans access to the energy wealth sitting under our feet" by his leasing restrictions and the banning new coal extraction on federal lands.
[135] In a White House speech in 2019, Trump hailed "America's environmental leadership" under his watch, asserting his administration was "being good stewards of our public land," reducing carbon emissions and promoting the "cleanest air" and "crystal clean" water.
[17][141] In August 2019, Trump had instructed Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to exempt Alaska's Tongass National Forest from logging restrictions established nearly 20 years ago during the Clinton administration.
In a statement Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said, "Restoring the Tongas' roadless protections supports the advancement of economic, ecologic and cultural sustainability in Southeast Alaska in a manner that is guided by local voices".
[149] In June 2020, the administration changed a five-year-old Obama-era rule to allow, once again, hunters on federal land in Alaska to use food to lure bears out of hibernation; to use artificial light to enter wolf dens; and to shoot animals from planes, boats, and snowmobiles.
An attorney who works with Democracy Forward commented, "The Bears Ears committee was designed to protect a treasure of the American West and stacking it with opponents of the monument could violate federal law.
Soon after Trump took office he ordered his administration to review marine sanctuaries and Ryan Zinke, Interior Department Secretary at that time, met with fishermen and fishing industry groups that were attempting to overturn the Obama legislation.
[157] Responding to Trump's ruling a senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, an organization that works to protect endangered species, said, "Gutting these safeguards attacks the very idea of marine monuments."
The administration's plan calls for "the construction of as many as four places for airstrips and well pads, 175 miles of roads, vertical supports for pipelines, a seawater-treatment plant and a barge landing and storage site.
[180] In December 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling which allowed the Trump administration to waive federal environmental protection laws to construct a border wall cutting through the National Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas.
[191] In February 2022, a federal judge restored grey wolf protections in 45 states saying the US Fish and Wildlife Service "failed to adequately analyze and consider the impacts of partial delisting and of historical range loss on the already-listed species.
In August, it was revealed that in fact Pruitt and other EPA officials had met with industry representatives on dozens of occasions in the weeks immediately prior to the March decision, promising them that it was "a new day" and assuring them that their wish to continue using chlorpyrifos had been heard.
"[195][196] Wendy Cleland-Hamnett, the agency's previous top official overseeing pesticides and toxic chemicals, said she first felt concern when the EPA's new leadership decided to reevaluate a plan to ban methylene chloride, and trichloroethylene.
Pruitt's chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, defended EPA's decision to withhold the results of the study to "ensure that the federal government is responding in a uniform way to our local, state, and Congressional constituents and partners."
"[212] In attempts to lift regulations on oil, mining, drilling, and farming industries, the Trump administration proposed a 31% budget cut to the EPA that would result in reduced initiatives to protect water and air quality, leaving much of the effort up to the states.
In June 2017, Pruitt announced that he would delay designating which areas met new National Ambient Air Quality Standards for ozone,[237] a byproduct of pollutants from burning fossil fuels that has been linked to asthma.
[238] In March 2018, Pruitt was finally ordered to do so by U.S. district judge Haywood Stirling Gilliam Jr.[239][240] As of May 2020, the Trump administration was trying to roll back restrictions on ethylene oxide, a carcinogenic air pollutant.
[244] The New York Times reported in October 2019 that the Trump EPA planned to roll back or eliminate a 2015 limitation on coal-fired power plants releasing heavy metals like arsenic, lead and mercury into water supplies.
"[66][261][262] In June 2019, Trump's White House reportedly tried to prevent a State Department intelligence analyst, Rod Schoonover, from testifying to Congress about "possibly catastrophic" effects of human-caused climate change.
The Trump EPA noted that while increased pollution as a result of the proposal "may also degrade air quality and adversely affect health and welfare," their plan will save $75 million in regulatory costs annually.
The report, authored by the world's leading climate scientists, warned there are only 12 years for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5C, beyond which "even half a degree will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.
In an unusual action, President Jimmy Carter filed a statement of support for the environmental-groups' lawsuit, saying the swap violated the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (Anilca).
